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FILM; Remembering Cannes 2003: Worst Festival Ever

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: June 1, 2003

CANNES, France—
FROM time to time here in Cannes, you will fall into conversation with a veteran of film festivals past, hardened by 20 or 30 May fortnights of Bandol and foie gras, black-tie screenings and late-night yacht parties, who will conjure memories of bygone glory and outrage -- of ''Rosetta'' in 1999, of ''The Tin Drum'' and ''Apocalypse Now'' in 1979, or even of the storied Cannes of 1968, when a group of French directors held down the curtain of the old Palais des Festivals at the start of a screening and brought the whole thing to a grinding halt.

Those of us who missed out on those heady times will return from this year's festival to burnish and propagate a legend of our own. In some future year, lingering over a midnight dinner as the well-dressed crowds rush by, we will thoughtfully swirl the dregs in our wine glasses and remember 2003, the year of ''Brown Bunny'' and ''Les Côtelettes,'' the year that the most talked-about films were the ones in other festivals, the year that every critic became an incarnation of the Comic Book Guy on ''The Simpsons,'' pronouncing the 56th edition of Cannes the worst festival ever.

A bit of perspective. With the official competition entries and three sidebar festivals, there were, as always, more movies than anyone could possibly see -- and a number of good ones, including most of the major prize-winners. Just not a big enough number.

The shock of this Cannes was the overall mediocrity of the official competition slate, which, by the time the awards were announced last Sunday, had overwhelmed even the most tolerant and optimistic observers. There were calls for the ouster of Gilles Jacob, the president of the Board of Directors, or of Thierry Fremaux, the festival's artistic head, and competing theories as to which one was responsible for the debacle. It was widely noted that, while four of the films competing for the Palme d'Or were French, a far greater number had at least some French financing. In an interview in Le Monde, Mr. Jacob insisted that this was evidence not of cronyism or parochialism, but of France's ''profound interest in diversity,'' and was a sign of the French film industry's good health. Further, he observed that the American studios had offered ''a dearth of films that have both great artistic quality and popular appeal.''

No argument here. But Mr. Jacob's accusation would have carried more weight if either artistic quality or popular appeal had been more strongly in evidence among the hodgepodge of odd, bad, puzzling, boring, amusing and sometimes not-too-terrible films that dominated the program. In a festival consecrated to the work of established and emerging masters, the list of directors whose new films were not in competition was remarkable: Ingmar Bergman, Wong Kar-Wai, Joel and Ethan Coen, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Emir Kusturica, on and on. What a festival that might have been.

And may yet be -- but in Venice, in August. By mid-festival, the legend of Venice future had overtaken the legends of Cannes past as a topic of conversation. ''Are you going to Venice?'' one critic would ask another. ''I think I may have to,'' was the usual reply, delivered with a weary sigh as the respondent composed a mental memo to his or her editor, selflessly volunteering, in the name of journalistic duty and international cinematic excellence, to spend 10 grueling late-summer days on the Lido.

This being France, the recriminations and premature post-mortems took on a decidedly political cast. Before the festival started, it had been assumed that the ongoing catastrophe in Franco-American diplomacy would cast its shadow over the sun-dappled Mediterranean. As if to quiet any such notion, a page on the official Cannes Web site was headed with a quote from Jean Cocteau: ''The festival is an apolitical no-man's land, a microcosm of what the world would be like if people could contact each other directly and speak the same language.'' Which it may have been, if you consider booing or snoring a lingua franca. The first press screening of Vincent Gallo's ''Brown Bunny'' -- in which Mr. Gallo, the writer, producer, director, editor, cameraman and star, drives across the United States in what feels like real time before engaging in graphic (and quite possibly real) oral sex with Chloë Sevigny -- was remarkable for the unrestrained hostility of the audience. They clapped sarcastically when, for example, Mr. Gallo descended from his van on the side of the highway, walked around to the back, took out a sweater, put it on, and climbed back into the driver's seat. They whistled when he took a shower in a motel. And then, every time his name appeared in the end credits (which was often), they whistled some more, and gave voice to that French form of abuse that sounds like a cross between the lowing of a cow and the hooting of an owl.

Roger Ebert, descending the steps of the Palais, told a television crew that ''Brown Bunny'' was perhaps the worst film ever to compete in the festival. A few days later, Screen International, the British trade publication that publishes a daily Cannes edition, announced that Mr. Gallo had apologized. ''I accept what the critics say,'' he was quoted as saying. ''If no one wants to see it, they are right -- it is a disaster of a film and it was a waste of time. I apologize to the financiers of the film but I assure you it was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film.''